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7 Responses to “The Metaphors in Odysseus’ Adventures”

The adventure of book 5 symbolizes the beginning of the end of the journey for Odysseus because it was one of the last legs of the journey. Another reason that this adventure symbolizes the beginning of the end is because when he reached Phaecia, it was clear that these were the people who would finally take him home to Ithaca. Finally, the last reason that this adventure symbolizes the beginning of the end is because at this point, he finally had the majority of the gods on his side helping him reach home.

The main analysis in this book is Odysseus’ never ending journey and this is shown in the underworld. In book 11 odysseus travels through the underworld and speaks to Tiresias and many other people. In this passage I think Tiresias is the most important person Odysseus speaks to. Tiresias tells Odysseus his future and in end the end what will happen. He says Odysseus will have a safe travel home to Ithica. But, once he gets there he will soon have to leave on a new journey. He will have to take an oar to a land where there is no sea. When he finds such a land he is to bury the oar. Then he must make sacrifices to posiedon until he forgives him. He will also have to tell the people of this land of the sea and of its salt. This is an analysis of Odysseus’ never ending journey. No matter what you get through there will always be another problem that you must face once again. The only time odysseus will ever be at peace is at his death.

Throught the book, we see Odysseus struggle with his “hectic schedule”. This is a metaphor for life inn that the journey will never stop. AS a specific example, refer to book 12, The Cattle of The Sun. In this book, th reader see that once Odysseus has finally escape Ogygia, made it past the Island of the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, he is forced by the gods to repaeat the obsatcles he has overcome once again. Oysseus is fact a metaphor for life becaus the obstacles facing him never let up and at times, he believes he will never be at peace or at rest in Ithica. This gives the reader a conection to how many humans feel helpless in life, and like Odysseus, fear that the troubles will never go to rest.

Odysseus’s journey is a metaphor to life. He has many obstacles to overcome that seem never ending, just as life is presented with. A specific example is in book 12, just as Odysseus has successfully endured one obstacle (ogygia) he is faced with many back to back. He leaves the island of Ogygia and with out much time, is faced with the island of the sirens, the monster scylla, and the whirlpool charydbis. This is such a perfect relation to the metaphor shown in the Odyssey because life doesn’t stop when it is convenient for the one living that life, it continues no matter how many nor how often one must face an obstacle.

In book 13, Return to Ithaca, Odysseus’s journey, at that stage, metaphorically means Odysseus’s resurrection. When he wakes up he is basically coming back to life from his horrible journey. The reason it is a resurrection is because Odysseus went through a long and terrible journey, but it all ended when he awoke on the shore of Ithaca, which resembles coming back from the dead. When you resurrect your slate is wiped clean, which is exactly what happened. Odysseus had his slate cleaned and began his new life in Ithaca.

Throughout The Odyssey, there is an extended metaphor of “the never ending journey”. The biggest example of this was in Book 11, when Odysseus travels to the underworld. He goes there because Circe tells him that he must go there in order to find out how to travel home to Ithaca. While there, Odysseus learns about his future and how he will get home from Tiresias, but he also finds out something that he wasn’t suspecting. The last thing Tiresias tells him is that once he finally gets home to Ithaca, he then must go back on another journey. In this journey he must carry an oar inland where the sea is not known of. Here he is to make sacrifices to Poseidon asking for forgiveness. This represents the never ending journey because it shows that ever ending of one journey is just the beginning of yet another journey. Your journey is never truly “over” until you die. That’s the only point at which your journey actually ends, but throughout your life, every time one journey ends, it just opens the door to another journey and life continues on like this until peace comes along at the end of your journey with your death.

Throughout The Odyssey one of the extended metaphor’s was when Odysseus is home or actually in a stable environment, he is a “fish out of water.” This is because the purpose of Odysseus’s life is his journey. Without the journey or another activity at hand it is simply just out of place for Odysseus. Odysseus is constantly moving from one action to the other whether he is in Ogygia, Phaecia, Aeaea, or The land of the Cyclops, there is no rest. The meaning of this is that Odysseus is a strong and brave hero, Homer is trying to get all of his readers to understand his importance and strength. The only way Odysseus and his crew can leave the land of Aeaea is by way of visiting the Underworld. When in the underworld Odysseus meets once again, old friends and legends that have passed. There is one man in particular, Tireseas who comes up to Odysseus and tells him of his future. TIreseas says that once Odysseus is home and everything is going well for him, he will have to journey once more to his final destination carrying an oar to the land where men do not know salt because they live so far from the sea. Once here a man will tell Odysseus something that will lead him into plunging the Oar into the sand and praising and asking for forgiveness of the gods. Tireseas tells Odysseus that his story is never ending. All of these events in Odysseus’s life represent his ongoing and “never meant to be ended” journeys. His journey will only truly be over when he meets death face to face.